Interscope Records
The Santa Monica label that distributed Death Row through the gangsta rap years.
Interscope Records is an American record label based in Santa Monica, California, wholly owned by Universal Music Group as a division of the Interscope Capitol Labels Group. Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field founded it in 1990 as a $20 million joint venture with Warner Music Group's Atlantic Records.
Quick Facts
- Parent
- Universal Music Group
- Founded
- 5 September 1990
- Founder
- Jimmy Iovine, Ted Field
- Distributor
- Universal Music Group, Polydor (United Kingdom and France)
- Country
- United States
- Location
- Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Lore & Background
The label let A&R staff control decisions and gave artists and producers full creative control; its first hits came within a year and it was profitable by 1993. In 1992 it acquired exclusive rights to market and distribute Death Row Records, which put it at the center of the mid-1990s gangsta rap controversy.
Reader's Guide
Time Warner, then Warner Music Group's parent, severed ties in 1995 by selling its 50 percent stake back to Field and Iovine for $115 million; in 1996 MCA Inc., later Universal Music Group, bought half the label for a reported $200 million. Iovine was CEO and chairman until 2014, succeeded by John Janick.
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